Incentives are motivators and highly critical in determining positive feelings and work behaviour in different contexts and satisfaction often depends on its relevance to felt needs of workers. The uncritical adoption of foreign schemes in local contexts has distanced reward strategies from employees’ needs and demands alternative strategies. The study tested innovative incentives and relationships with satisfaction and performance of employees in a local enterprise using 50 participants (74% males). A reliable instrument, aggregate α=0.74 was used to gather information and inferential statistics used for analysis. Inferential statistics were used to run the analysis. Results of the study showed that traditional and nontraditional incentives significantly determine employee job satisfaction, (p < 0.01). With regards to effects on performance, traditional incentive was significant, (p < 0.01), while nontraditional incentive failed to predict performance. Although results suggested that traditional and nontraditional incentives remain key determinants of satisfaction, only traditional incentives could influence performance. The test of positive feelings as a factor in performance was highly significant. The paper, therefore, suggests that additional studies should be carried out in order to validate the innovative model for best practices in incentives design and administration in local contexts.
Keywords: Compensation, Culture, Innovation, Perception, Work
